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Trader Joe's, other national chains, creating a buzz in Jacksonville

Bruce.Lipsky@jacksonville.com--08/30/2013--REI opened in Markets of Town Center, adjacent to St. Johns Town Center this past spring. REI was photographed on Friday August 30, 2013, in Jacksonville, FL. (Florida Times-Union/Bruce Lipsky)

Bruce.Lipsky@jacksonville.com--08/30/2013--Lush, fresh handmade cosmetics, open in the St. Johns Town Center recently. Lush was photographed on Friday August 30, 2013, in Jacksonville, FL. (Florida Times-Union/Bruce Lipsky)

Jennifer Scott samples cosmetics at Lush at St. Johns Town Center. Scott, who says she needs to sample products in person because of sensitive skin, used to drive to Orlando to visit Lush before stores opened in Jacksonville.

Bruce.Lipsky@jacksonville.com--08/30/2013--Norstrom, and other new shops, will be coming to the St. Johns Town Center in 2014. The fenced off area, with new housing going up nearby, was photographed on Friday August 30, 2013, in Jacksonville, FL. (Florida Times-Union/Bruce Lipsky)

Bruce.Lipsky@jacksonville.com--08/30/2013--Norstrom, and other new shops, will be coming to the St. Johns Town Center in 2014. The fenced off area was photographed on Friday August 30, 2013, in Jacksonville, FL. (Florida Times-Union/Bruce Lipsky)

Shopping, for many, is often a recreational pursuit. In Jacksonville that pursuit has lately become a lot more interesting.

Some national chains with serious buzz about them have moved or plan to move to the area. Serious shoppers have noticed, for these are the kinds of destinations that people used to have to drive to, or visit while on vacation and rave about when they get home.

Word of a Trader Joe’s coming to Jacksonville Beach, for example, has been big news to fans of that grocery store, which has inspired a cultlike devotion in some.

“Finally,” said Taylor Artel. “I moved here from California, and they’re everywhere.”

She was shopping for a backpack Friday at another one of those buzzed-about places — REI, an outdoor equipment store that has its first Florida location at The Markets at Town Center.

Dia Hodnett has been the store’s retail sales manager since its March 1 opening. Not a day goes by, she said, without someone telling her that they had been waiting for the store.

They’ve had customers drive from Tampa and other Florida cities, from Georgia and even South Carolina, she said. They’ll then shop at other stores in the St. Johns Town Center area. “Folks will make a day out of it,” Hodnett said.

The Town Center has been a focal point for the new retailers, many of them upscale places such as Tiffany & Co., Brooks Brothers, Louis Vuitton and the under-construction Nordstrom department store, which is also opening an off-price store, Nordstrom Rack, nearby.

Not every new chain store is necessarily high-end, and not every one is in Town Center.

Performance Bicycle, the nation’s largest specialty bike retailer, opened nearby on Southside Boulevard. Swedish clothing retailer H&M, which has stores in more than 40 countries, opened at The Avenues mall. Bass Pro Shops, whose giant outdoor stores are something of a tourist attraction, plans a location in northern St. Johns County.

Fading blue collarNot everyone’s a fan of national chains. University of North Florida business professor Josh Samli, for example, noted that independent local stores create 2.6 jobs to every one created by a chain.

But he and others say the arrival of those stores is a sign of a rapidly changing city.

“Jacksonville had a reputation of being a blue-collar town for decades,” said University of North Florida economist Paul Mason. “But we are getting more white-collar jobs locally, and with them more money to spend on higher-priced items.”

Mason has been in Jacksonville 30 years. The differences he sees now?

“Radically different.”

Mason, who leads UNF’s Local Economic Indicators Project, said local unemployment could drop below 6 percent before the end of the year, which would be better than the nation as a whole.

Jacksonville University’s Don Capener, dean of the Davis College of Business, said the area’s relatively low cost of living leaves many with more discretionary income. Retailers notice that.

“REI is a discretionary expense,” he said. “Nobody says you have to have REI gear to be an outdoorsman. You do that because it’s that share of the wallet that’s discretionary. You can say, ‘I’m going to do that.’ ”

Chicken and eggAn improving national economy has retail chains in an expansion frame of mind, said Steven Kirn, executive director of the University of Florida’s David F. Miller Retailing Education and Research Center.

Places such as Jacksonville then pop up.

“[Retailers] are kind of saturated in so many markets, so if you’ve got a market like Jacksonville, which has been kind of lagging, it’s sitting there like a big red target: Put a store there,” he said.

A hot location — say, Jacksonville’s Town Center — begets a “chicken and egg phenomenon,” Kirn said. “People go there because there are stores there, and stores go there because there are people there.”

Of course chains don’t pick a location willy-nilly, Kirn said. They have a sophisticated formula that basically comes down to this: Who are the customers who are going to spend money, and how far are they willing to drive to do that?

Jennifer Scott used to drive from Jacksonville to Orlando to visit a Lush store, one of 800 locations for the skin care and cosmetics chain. She couldn’t order online, she said, because she has sensitive skin and has to try products in person.

On Friday, she was at the Lush store at the St. Johns Town Center. It opened in July, though she could have also gone to the Lush at The Avenues — it opened Aug. 24.

That’s made her shopping life easier, though there’s always room for improvement.